What Do You Want Gilbert?
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
What do youuuuu wannnttt?
Tell me! What do you want?
There is an external and internal dialogue within you during the holiday season. What do I want for my Christmas presents? What do I want my goals to be for the year 2024? What do I want to drink while I hang out with my mother-in-law? High West Whiskey, of course.
Oh yes, this time of year is not only for family and giving but also for reflection.
Along with sending my Christmas list off into the family group chat and making a cliche New Year’s Resolution list, I also reflected on three things:
Career and Wealth Reflections
Did I hit my wealth goals? Where do I want to be a year from now? How can I get there?
Am I happy in my career? Does what I do feel like play to me but look like work to others? Where is the world heading? What are possible new opportunities? How much has my network grown this year? How can I increase my meaningful network?
Digital & Physical Clean Up
If your physical and mental environment is a mess, how do you expect to succeed in this life? Clean up around the house. Sell some stuff. Give some things to the Goodwill. Organize your phone and laptop home screen (make folders, delete pictures, delete emails, etc). Cancel useless subscriptions and delete apps you don’t use. You could stretch this further and ask how my physical health was this year. How can I be healthier? Diet? Lifting Routine?
Values and Personal Reflection
Go back over your values and who you want to be. If you don’t have a list, make one.
A few of mine are:
Be calm
Be fit and healthy
Live in the moment
Be kind
Seek knowledge and truth
Be a leader
Honestly, have I done myself justice to live up to my values? How can I improve each year? What areas are lacking? What areas am I doing well at?
While the above reflection exercise has been crucial in my life, I find that as I get older, I crave more and more simplicity. Simplicity is in my investing decisions, banking, and budget, how I exercise, how my environment is structured, and in my values.
Fuck the reflections for a moment.
The question again - WHAT DO YOU WANT?
It is quite a simple question. I am not asking what other people want or expect of you. I am not asking about career or spring cleaning or your value list.
I am asking one question - What do you want?
To make a difference, you must be selfish and start with yourself first. As I am writing this, I am reminded of what the great thinker Confucious said:
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
― Confucius
What does your heart want, Marcus?
As Gilbert Grape said, “I want to be a good person.”
“I want to be a good person,” Gilbert calmly and spiritually told Becky.
I want to be a good person and cherish those I love around me. We tend to admire the dead and forget the living. “I wish I had just one more day with this person,” we tell ourselves. Well, that person is right in front of you. It is your mother or father, brother or sister, friend or family.
My father passed when I was young, and I spent and still do spend the majority of my time thinking of him and wishing for more time with him. This is a mistake. This has been my mistake. I forget that my wonderful mother is still here and breathing and living and….well, you catch my drift.
Take your regrets with the dead and make them right with living. Ask the questions you never got to ask. Forgive them, hug them, and create memories with them. Take pictures and videos with them. Laugh, cry, and tell stories with the people you love.
Life is short. Be a good person and cherish the ones helping you be one.
Love and peace into 2024,
-Molesy